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Lowe’s to shut 51 stores across North America

US home improvement retailer Lowe’s has revealed it will wind down 51 stores across the United States and Canada as part of an “ongoing strategic reassessment.”

According to Bloomberg, the reassessment relates to a renewed focus on the business’s large-format locations, with several small-format stores among those to be shuttered.

Major global retailers including Ikea and Sephora have embraced the trend of building smaller retail stores alongside larger, full-featured stores in an effort to more efficiently drive growth and reduce expenses.

“While decisions that impact our associates are next easy, the store closures are a necessary step in our strategic reassessment as we focus on building a stronger business,” Lowe’s president and chief executive Marvin R. Ellison said in a statement to media.

“We believe our people are the foundation of our business and essential to our future growth, and we are making every effort to transition impacted associates to nearby Lowe’s stores.”

The majority of the 51 stores are expected to be closed by February 2019 and will conduct closing sales, while select stores in the US will be closed immediately.

Earlier in the year, Ellison outlined a plan to sharpen the brand’s focus on retail fundamentals and limit any project or initiative that detracted from Lowe’s core mission of being a “great omnichannel home improvement retailer”.

Further details regarding the store closures are expected to be provided alongside the company’s Q4 results in November.

This story originally appeared on sister-site Inside Retail Australia.

InsideRetail.co.nz is New Zealand's leading authority on retail industry news and trends. Throughout the day we publish retail news, intelligence, and analysis, facilitating and informing the retail industry in New Zealand, Asia, and beyond.
Our sister site, Inside Retail.com.au has been a trusted source of retail industry news for more than 35 years.